Television

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Not so Merry Christmas in Chicago

It was a grim holiday weekend in Chicago,
where the Chicago Tribune counted 61 shooting victims from Friday afternoon
to Monday night, the Christmas weekend. Eleven were killed and more than a dozen others were in
serious or critical condition. Authorities said eight of the shootings had
multiple victims, including two double homicides.

The number of people shot over the holiday weekend also
sharply outpaced recent years. During the Christmas weekend in 2015, 29 people
were shot and seven of them died. In 2014, when Christmas fell on a Thursday,
the four-day weekend included 35 people shot and seven people killed, according
to Tribune data.

One was an attack this year in the East
Chatham neighborhood that left two dead and five others wounded, and an
attack in the Austin neighborhood left two dead. The violence added to the
tolls this year in Chicago, where more than 700 homicides have been recorded
with more than 4,000 people shot — a level of violence not seen in Chicago
since the late 1990s. Last year, 488 people were killed in Chicago.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.